{I like to walk around amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world.} (g.Santayana)

57 posts categorized "Art"

"We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones."

Paulo's mosaic of Delaware River stones, Atlantic Ocean seashells, colorful tesserae, and found objects including the girl on the rock / June 2014

The mosaic art is one of the earliest known, and belongs quite to the infancy of civilization. The Chinese possess it with their other stationary arts from time immemorial; it was found among the primitive inhabitants of America, and in a more or less rude form among the earliest remains of nearly all nations. Some authors think it was invented by the Persians, ... After them the Assyrians are supposed to have taught this art to the Egyptians and the Greeks, from whom it passed to the Romans, who unquestionably used it with the greatest profusion, and carried it with them into all their provinces, including Gaul and Britain, as is abundantly proved by the innumerable examples which are found on the site of every Roman station or villa.

~ Romanian sculpter Constantin Brancusi who made his career in Paris (he grew up close to the Carpathian Mountains, an area known for its traditional folk crafts like woodcarving; geometric patterns of the region can be seen in his works)

Image of the Boulevard du Palais in Paris, circa 1870-1889 from the Rijksmuseum

Indeed, the city has a centuries-old tradition of solo exploration, personified by the flâneur, or stroller. Flânerie is, in its purest form, a goal-less pursuit, though for some it evolved into a purposeful art: Walking and observing became a method of understanding a city, an age. Baudelaire described the flâneur as a passionate spectator, one who was fond of “botanizing on the asphalt,” as the essayist Walter Benjamin would later put it.

This was the night of the girl on the stage with the yellow tulips who smiled and sang and sparkled and glowed so that you couldn't take your eyes off her and each time she smiled and looked at the audience you were positive that she was smiling right at you.